Philippines Typhoon Haiyan Is Incredible On Many Levels

You'll see on the news today reports about incredible Super Typhoon Haiyan hitting the Philippines, causing mass destruction.

A visible satellite closeup of the eye
of Typhoon Haiyan hitting the Philippines.
Those striations in the clouds surounding
the eye indicate extremely powerful winds.  

Early reports suggest three people have died so far, but unfortunately the death toll will go way up from there, considering the strength of the storm and the extent of the damage.

The area it hit also had a bad earthquake recently, so landslides are probably more likely than they otherwise would be.

Haiyan, also known as Yolanda, is one of the strongest typhoons on record for the entire earth. (Typhoon is the east Asian word for hurricane)

It also might be the typhoon with the strongest winds to affect land areas, according to hurricane expert Dr. Jeff Masters. All other typhoons that are among the strongest on record reached their peak strength away from land. Haiyan had sustained winds possibly as high as 190 mph, with gusts to 230 at the time it hit land.

Picture how terrifying this must have been for the people who live in the typhoon zone. We're familiar with news reports of shaken survivors of strong tornados in the United States describing what it was like hiding in their disintegrating houses as the 150 to 200 mph winds of a tornado passed overhead.

But tornados only affect one particular place for five or ten minutes at most. Imagine enduring several hours of tornado strength winds.

Combine that with huge storm surges coming in from the sea and a couple feet of rain and you can imagine how serious this is.

Writing at Quartz, Meteorologist Eric Holthaus said Haiyan is the first tropical system he is aware of that went off the scale that measures hurricane or typhoon strength.  Meteorologist use something called the  Dvorak scale to gauge and compare the strengths of hurricanes. The scale goes up to 8.0. Haiyan went above that.

The typhoon will soon leave the Philippines and head toward Vietnam. It won't be quite as strong when it hits land in Vietnam, but it will still be an enormous, powerful, dangerous storm.

This one, sadly, is one for the record books, and not in a good way.

Here's a video of how bad it was in the Philippines: